Technologies de la mémoire: Supports de stockage amateurs et pratiques du film de famille sur « la longue durée »

Storage media are at the heart of the home movie as a 20th-century amateur practice. Over the years, various generations have documented and materialised their moving family memories by means of different storage media. From 35mm nitrate-based film technologies from the early 20th century; 9.5mm, 16mm and 8mm acetate-based “small-gauges” from the 1920s and 1930s; cassette-based Super 8 and Single 8 film technologies from the mid-1960s and 1970s; as well as electronic consumer video technologies from the 1980s and 1990s, to various digital storage media from the late 1990s and 2000s. This article analyses how changes in these so-called “technologies of memory” have shaped new forms of home movie recording and amateur storage practices in the last hundred years. The longue durée perspective reveals the complex interplay between the materiality of film, video, and digital technologies as amateur storage media, their mediated content and practices of use.